Entries in 711 Press
(62)

Now you can enjoy each and every single 711 Press book at any time by signing up for Amazon's Kindle Unlimited subscrition service. For only $9.99 per month, you can access all of our books and read them whenever you like, as often as you like. This is Amazon new Netflix-for-eBooks subscription service, and we're a part of it. Join now to unlock our full catalog of books, both past and present, and you will also be given access to all of our future books as well! But it won't take you months to read our books. In fact, you can probably read them all in three weeks or less, so $9.99 will go a very long way in that sense.

After a brief break from the hectic publishing schedule of last year, we decided to give our authors a break and allow them to catch up on outstanding material. Well the break is over folks, and we've got a lot of good stuff coming this year. Age of the Sigil will see a double-season launch (that's 2 mega omnibuses to replace the single-episode we've ceased doling out as of last year). Also look for Roger Vallon's third Kill Factor entry titled Death Strike, and offerings from a couple new authors we've signed. Ronald Coleborn's Legends of the Dread Realm saga also continues with Dragon's Tyranny. Phoenix Earth Season two will come on the heals of the season one omnibus release, and Order of 5ive and Mafiosi both get new seasons this year, but you won't have to wait week after week to read the eps., 'cause we're launching them Netflix style. So let the fun begin folks.

We're pleased to announce that today we have also lowered prices on all 711 Press books in the OverDrive system, so libraries around the world can stock up on even more 711 Press titles at significantly reduced costs. We like to pass on savings to consumers whenever possible; think of it as paying it forward. Hopefully this will inspire others to do the same.

Meanwhile, gobble up as many books as you want librarians, because, unlike Penguin and Random House and every big pub that refuses to give you a break, we at 711 Press appreciate continuing service public libraries provide to patrons both nationally and internationally, fostering reading as a fundamental practice. We're just trying to do our part to support that important cause.

As promised, for our readers and subscribers who've sent so many wonderful emails in support of this latest 711 Press blog, we've decided to turn this particular blog subject into a series. Hey, we might as well "serialize" it, ha-ha. Through this blog, we'll keep you updated on our thoughts about Kindle Serials and how they compare to 711 Press TV Books over the weeks and months to come. Without knowing much about Amazon's Serials at this point, considering Amazon is releasing little information on the 8 titles they've announced except for the names of the books and authors, we've decided to make the focus of this particular blog post about how we stand out beyond what you'll receive through Amazon Serials.

First off, we're fine with Amazon putting out serials. In fact, we welcome it. It will only serve to prove what we've already stated in the past, that episodic fiction is the future for readers who love their Kindles. And who better to release a slew of serialized Kindle books than Amazon? However, with that said, one may wonder if Amazon is just trying to repackage their fallen "Kindle Singles" platform, re-envisioning the form of a single to stay at the head of the game, since that failed to catch on... No need to thank us Amazon, we knew you'd "catch on" eventually.

So, in our observation, if Amazon were a major television network such as NBC, 711 Press would be considered the Fox network in its beginning stages. As a "smaller" network, we (Daniel Middleton and Jaime Vendera) have the creative freedom to do what we want to create amazing, quality programming. Being a smaller network is to our advantage, because we started this company with a vision to release only books that we oversee from start to finish, refusing to release more than one serial at a time, choosing quality fiction releases over quantity. By focusing our combined efforts on one serial TV Book show at a time, while working with dedicated writers and a season editor, we can lift the storytelling to lofty and highly entertaining heights, particularly for those who are into the kinds of genres we are.

What does 711 Press being a smaller network mean to you? It means that you are guaranteed to receive one new Movie Book per month and one new TV Book episode per week. We stand by our "programming" and it's our promise that each Movie Book (check out our currentMovie Book Titles here) and TV Book release, includingOrder of 5ive,Mafiosi,Age of the Sigil,Phoenix Earth, and all future titles, have and will be thoroughly plotted, eloquently written, and furiously edited to make sure that every single 711 Press release is grade A quality. And as each new 711 serial nears its end, we have a new TV Book series waiting in the wings to fill it's shoes. So consider us an alterntive TV Network or movie studio with literary programming.

Many have asked us for more products. To that we say, "Quality over Quantity." We believe that if we were to release multiple TV Books at once, each individual TV Book serial may suffer in creative quality, due to loss of focus or attention. Lack of attention toward a fiction title brings to mind companies like AuthorHouse who've released books featuring poorly edited content with subpar covers.

Will Amazon go the way of AuthorHouse? We wonder what lengths Amazon will go to to make sure each of their serialized books receives the care and nurturing required in order to provide the reader with typo free, inspired, quality content worth the reader's attention. I guess we shall see--but we already know where you can receive that kind of quality this instant. So if you want to read quality, cutting edge serialized fiction from the company that reinvented the episodic read, check out our TV Books here.

After delivering quality serialized novels to Amazon for over a year in the form of what we call TV Books, Amazon has announced today that it will be serialzing 8 novels that Kindle users can subscribe to, paying one up front cost and receiving portions of the novels as they are published. We have preached this model for over a year now, when no one else has even attempted to try it, save one obscure company I can bring to mind that published similar books months after we launched Order of 5ive in July 2011.

We published our serials exclusively to Amazon for most of 2011, and all of 2012 so far, and we have long said that we are bringing ideas to the fore that will challenge current publishing conventions. Traditional publishing is falling apart due to outmoded business models and expensive publishing methods, but we feel that breathing new life into the industry is key to creating a groundswell of new readership. This is why we launched 711 Press, and particularly why we launched the TV Book line which can be viewed as serialized novels. In fact, in November of 2011, we postedthis blog about Episodic Fiction, which gives you some idea of where we stood at the time, and still do today.

So if you want to read cutting edge serialized fiction from a company that had its heart set on the model from the outset, check our ourTV Books here.

John Locke, the author of the Donovan Creed novels was wise when he inked a deal with a major publisher last year. He retained the eBook rights to his works and only allowed Simon & Schuster to redesign and distribute the print fare. That, for one thing, shows you how much clout the author had, being a member of the Kindle Million Club, and for another, it shows you how desperate big publishers are these days. A deal like that would have been unheard of ten, even five years ago. Now big pubs are surfing sites like Amazon looking for the next big thing: authors who can sell a fair amount of books on their own before they swoop in and snatch them up with a prized contract. But signee beware! Some of those deals really are too good to be true, unless you're John Locke, that is.

In this current environment, it behooves me why writers are still pining for major deals. If you can meet with any kind of success going independent, why not leverage that with the royalties you've reaped rather than going the traditional route, which is fast on the decline and holds to outmoded business models. Big pubs are just now trying to turn to new trends and embrace the future, but they've yet one foot in the past. Publishers still rely too heavily on big name writers like James Patterson, Jackie Collins, Stephen King, John Grisham, and so on, betting everything on frontlist books from these authors, which in essence keep them afloat. And that has long been the case. Because of this, many up and coming writers are neglected, with too little resources devoted to their releases to make them anything other than midlist authors, or less. I can't tell you how many traditionally published authors still have to hold down day jobs in order to make ends meet, while many self-published authors live solely on royalties.

I myself designed books for one author who was making $4,000 a month on just three books he self-published via KDP and Nook (He granted me access to both accounts for the sake of research, so this is not speculation). Numbers like that crush the majority of royalties reaped by many authors whose names easily roll off our tongues. What I'm seeing is a variation of the lemming syndrome, where writers blindly follow the long-established trend of mailing countless query letters to literary agents and bowing to conventions that will allow them to be published by major publishers with mostly New York addresses. Meanwhile, there's another trend brewing, and authors like John Locke are leading it. But why join the tail end? It's still early enough to get in on the ground floor folks!

It seems like a team of high-tech spies are sabotaging the market system to purposely collapse the arm of an evil conglomerate that is Facebook. LOL, you've gotta read the second and third book in the Kill Factor series to get what I'm saying here. (The third book is due out in November.) It's just that the stock has been tanking so hard since the IPO that one would think it were set up to fail following the major money grab by those who held the purse strings to begin with, leaving the suckers hard-working investors holding the bag (which is pretty much empty now).

The price of Facebook shares hit a new low today, thanks to the fact that certain lockup agreement rules expired which restricted early stockholders from jettisoning said shares (which totaled around 271 million additional shares). And about 2 billion shares are yet to hit the market, thanks to another lockup agreement that is set to expire next May. Yeah, look for this thing to tank, hard! You'd think Doc and Augggie from my series were holed up in a high-rise office in Beijing rubbing their eyes while gazing up at a bright array of monitors detailing the action they manipulated.